The former communities secretary Eric Pickles overruled the planning inspector’s decisions on onshore wind farms and gypsy caravans a disproportionately high number of times compared to other planned projects – according to a new Energydesk analysis.

The vast majority of these decisions applied to rural Tory seats many of which had MPs who have signed up to oppose onshore turbines.

In the case of onshore wind, 11 out of 12 rejections against the inspector’s advice to approve since last year were in Tory seats, and 30 of the 32 gypsy caravans rejected against the planning inspector were also in Tory seats.

Overall, the 12 onshore developments that have been dismissed by Pickles may have blocked about £37 million of added value to the economy, according to analysis from wind industry trade body Renewable UK.

Approving the 12 developments – around 137 MW – would have meant £152 million of investment into the industry and over 500 jobs, and would have blocked around 140,000 tonnes of carbon emissions per year, they claim.

According to an Energydesk analysis of the results of projects pulled in by Pickles for his consideration, three quarters of rejections were against the planning inspector for onshore wind and a similar amount (72%) for gypsy caravan sites.

There were no Pickles approvals against the planning inspector recommendation to reject for onshore wind.

This is compared to a Pickles rejection rate against the planning inspector’s encouragement of 23% for residential developments and 14% for solar projects.

Pickles has rejected 33 out of a total 37 onshore wind projects that he ‘called in’ or ‘recovered’ from local councils or the Planning Inspectorate – 89% of the projects that came across his desk were scrapped (though many of these were in line with the planning inspector).

Again, most (70%) of these were in Tory seats – though both onshore wind and gypsy caravans are likely to be situated in rural areas, and Conservative constituencies also tend to be in rural areas.

It is is tricky to determine whether there is any pattern to the decisions as these aesthetic issues tend to be subjective, and the aforementioned small sample size makes it difficult to draw any solid conclusions.

Energydesk contacted Conservative Campaign HQ press office for a comment from Pickles, but has not yet received anything.